Beginner overclocker - advice needed...

StevieP · 5 Apr 2007 at 23:15

I have just purchased an E4300 C2D with an Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA mobo and want to start overclocking....

Basically I have upped the FSB to 210MHz and dropped the DDR memory to 166 and using Intel TAT, I am getting 33 and 35 degrees on the two cores when idle and they jump to hovering around 46 and 49 degrees when I put them under the 100% load...

My question is - are these temps normal/OK and what are safe temps to be going up to???
I'm assuming that the "100% Workload level" is pretty much what a game will put on it???

Any advice will be appreciated....

StevieP

celliott · 5 Apr 2007 at 23:19

I could be wrong but I think upto around 55c is fine on C2D chips. The 100% usage will probably be more stress than games will put on your cpu (assuming thats both cores fully loaded) as the majority of games just use 50% of each core at the moment.

StevieP · 5 Apr 2007 at 23:27

Thanks for the advice, I've just read a bunch of posts stating that Intel TAT isnt all that accurate for temps, especially on the E4300's...

I've downloaded Coretemp and that says my cores are 32 and 34 degrees but I need a program to run alongside it to stress the cores - any suggestions??

StevieP

w3bbo · 6 Apr 2007 at 06:55

Anywhere upto 70c is ok imo for c2d, I don't like mine going above 60c but thats coz I came from an amd background I guess. They throttle at 85 iirc so this gives you a little safety buffer. Run orthos or occt or SNM to max out the cores temp.

StevieP · 6 Apr 2007 at 09:07

Thanks for the info

Anyone got any idea why my memory frequency dropped to 150MHz when I raised my FSB to 240 from 230? Every 10MHz increase on the FSB upto 230 seemed to raise the FSB about 10-12MHz too - but then it dropped itself?!?

:confused:

StevieP

WJA96 · 6 Apr 2007 at 09:24

Nothing stresses cores like TAT 100% loading. You always see the highest temperatures with TAT.

As for the RAM thing, have you forced it onto [166] or left the speed set to [AUTO]?

Given that you want to run 300FSB with 200MHz RAM, I would force it to [133] so you'll end up with RAM running at 200MHz when you finish with the CPU.

StevieP · 6 Apr 2007 at 09:43

I was running the memory at 200 when I first installed the CPU (at stock) but then when I upped the FSB by 10, the memory frequency went to about 210MHz so I then dropped the Memory to 166 in the bios and on the 210FSB, the memory was running at around 172MHz.
So I did a couple of increases, to 220 and 230FSB and each time the memory frequency (still set to 166 in the bios) jumped about 10-11MHz so I ended up on 230FSB and the memory at 191MHz - I thought no problem!

Then when I upped the FSB to 240, the memory frequency dropped to 150MHz?!?!? (still set to 166 in the bios)

Does this mean my mobo has recognised the memory would have jumped over the max 200 and automatically dropped the frequency to 133 to accomodate?? (even though it still says its set to 166 in the bios?)

As you can tell.....I pretty new to this!

StevieP

WJA96 · 6 Apr 2007 at 09:49

StevieP said:
I was running the memory at 200 when I first installed the CPU (at stock) but then when I upped the FSB by 10, the memory frequency went to about 210MHz so I then dropped the Memory to 166 in the bios and on the 210FSB, the memory was running at around 172MHz.
So I did a couple of increases, to 220 and 230FSB and each time the memory frequency (still set to 166 in the bios) jumped about 10-11MHz so I ended up on 230FSB and the memory at 191MHz - I thought no problem!

Then when I upped the FSB to 240, the memory frequency dropped to 150MHz?!?!? (still set to 166 in the bios)

Does this mean my mobo has recognised the memory would have jumped over the max 200 and automatically dropped the frequency to 133 to accomodate?? (even though it still says its set to 166 in the bios?)

As you can tell.....I pretty new to this!

StevieP

When I evaluated this board I used Crucial Ballistix PC4000 RAM and left the RAM set to AUTO. It set it as DDR400 and let me clock it upto about 235 then went into an endless cycle of reboots. I forced the RAM to 166 and it did the same, so I forced it to 133 and it let me clock it to 295 (almost 2.7GHz) before I got the reboots again.

I don't have the board anymore so I can't help beyond saying what worked for me. The best place to ask this is probably in the official DualCore-VSTA thread thread which has now also become the QuadCore-VSTA thread as well.

How are you finding it compared to the AMD setup?

StevieP · 6 Apr 2007 at 09:58

I'm impressed so far, this is the first time I've had a crack at overclocking anything but its apparently a crime to get an E4300 and NOT overclock it!

When I first installed it, all I ran was 3DMark and got about a 500 point increase from my A64 3200 (obviously mainly aimed at the graphics card) and going up to a 230FSB as mentioned above, it was up to about 9500 (1000 over my AMD system)

I know my memory is not the best so I'm not expecting miracles, was just surprised that the memory frequency dropped automatically rathern than me having to adjust it to 133???

What is the best overall system benchmark to run to guage what impact my OC'ing is having??

StevieP